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Founded by a flutist and a percussionist, the Strasbourg-based ensemble HANATSUmiroir specializes in experimental music and stage research. But its musicians also work with toddlers, in crèches and nursery schools. These workshops are aptly named: HANATSUmini! Ayako Okubo, one of the ensemble's flutists, talks to us about these meetings with an audience like no other.
How did HANATSUmini come about?
When we talk about contemporary music, people immediately think of unusual sounds: strange noises that surprise, that strike the ear. We wanted to introduce very young ears to the interest of the sounds that surround us. As soon as a noise is reproduced with intention, it becomes sound and therefore, potentially, music. For the past five years, we've been working with toddlers aged from a few months to three years, kindergarten students and older elementary school pupils. It's essential that very young ears - babies, toddlers - are introduced to a variety of musical languages, that they are open to all kinds of sounds, so that they don't regard experimental music as unpleasant sound, something to be regarded with suspicion! We want to give these children the opportunity to build up their own acoustic and sonic baggage. Curiosity can be learned.
How do the workshops work?
Our interventions are necessarily short: half an hour for toddlers, no more, an hour for primary school children. We don't play the ensemble's experimental repertoire for the little ones: there's no question of offering a version of our concerts to children! We come with a suitcase full of natural objects: nuts, pebbles, grains of rice, to provoke sensory stimuli. Then we bring out the real instruments: bird whistles, followed by my flute. I demonstrate different blows, different sounds, a little elaborate melody, atonal... Sometimes I take up little children's melodies, but not in the usual, expected way. I can also just press the keys of my flute, to make people guess a familiar melody, but with different timbres. This is because we work primarily on timbre research during our sound-making workshops. Three HANATSUmiroir musicians take care of HANATSUmini: Rajani Turlesky, a musician who works in schools, Noëllie Poulain, a dancer, and myself. Ear and movement are closely linked in our workshops.
How do children react?
When I work in CM1 and CM2 classes, the children laugh when I make strange sounds with my flute. It's funny: they're not very tall, but their ears are already formatted. The younger ones have a new ear, with no preconceptions, no codes. They welcome all sounds. This shows how important it is to make them aware at an early age of sound worlds that are off the beaten track, if only to pay attention to all the sounds that surround them.
How did you continue to work with children during the health crisis?
With all our activities halted, we continued to offer sound hunts on Facebook and Youtube. In our videos, we invited families to set up small musical awakening workshops in their own homes. The idea is to awaken young children to the noises that punctuate their daily lives, the arrangement of which can easily be transformed into a little music. The exercise not only stimulates their creativity, but also introduces the idea of music being present everywhere, and not just on a concert stage or in loudspeakers. The aim of HANATSUmiroir's musical awakening is to help children understand that any noise, once emitted with intention and combined with other noises, can be transformed into a musical composition.
In addition to the HANATSUmini workshops, you like to organize concerts with commentary for families...
Yes, family sessions are organized alongside our concerts to welcome children and families, from nursery schools to elementary school. We also premiered Valley of Wonders at the 2018 Venice Biennale: a show for young audiences about the legends of the Roya Valley in the Alps, written by Maurilio Cacciatore. We're preparing for the end of the season, Alicea tale by German composer Ole Hübner. Thanks to our work in day-care centers and schools, but also thanks to this formula of small participatory shows, young ears quickly learn to open up: we can soon, naturally, offer them contemporary pieces.
Interview by Suzanne Gervais
The HANATSUmini playlist:
